Believe Me (Shatter Me, #6.5) (13)

I clench my jaw against the cold.

Somehow, despite the howling wind, the dog appears to have fallen asleep, its body vibrating like a small motor at my feet. I take a moment to study its patchy brown fur, noticing, for the first time, that there’s a piece missing from one of its ears.

I exhale, slowly, and rest my elbows on my knees, drop my head into my hands. The small box digs deeper into my flesh.

I’m trying to convince myself to get going—to return to work—when I feel Ella approach. I stiffen, then straighten.

My pulse picks up.

I sense her long before I see her, and when she finally comes into view my heart reacts, contracting in my chest even as my body remains motionless. She lifts a hand when she sees me, the single moment of distraction costing her a fight with a bramble. This area, like so many others, is carpeted in half-dead brush, ripe for a wildfire. Ella struggles to disentangle herself, yanking hard to free her shirt—and promptly frowns when she’s released. She studies what appears to be the torn edge of her sweater before looking up at me. She shrugs.

I didn’t really care about this sweater anyway, she seems to say, and I can’t help but smile.

Ella laughs.

She is windswept. The gusts are growing more aggressive, whipping her hair so that it wraps around her face as she heads in my direction. I can hardly see her eyes; only glimpses of her lips and cheeks, pink with exertion. She swipes at her dark hair with one hand, pushing at overgrown weeds with the other. She is gently rendered in this light, soft in a nondescript sweater the color of moss. Dark jeans. Tennis shoes.

The light changes as she moves, the clouds fighting to hide the sun and occasionally failing. It makes the scene feel dreamlike. She looks so much like herself in this moment that it startles me; it’s almost as if she’s stepped out of some of my favorite memories.

“I’ve been looking for you everywhere,” she says breathlessly, laughing as she collapses beside me on the boulder. She smells like apricot—it’s a new shampoo—and the scent of it fills my head.

She pokes me in the stomach. “Where’ve you been?”

“Here.”

“Very funny,” she says, but her smile fades as she studies my face. I find it difficult to meet her gaze.

“Hey,” she says softly.

“Hi,” I say.

“What’s wrong?”

I shake my head slowly. “Nothing.”

“Liar,” she whispers.

I close my eyes.

I feel myself change when she’s near me; the effect is powerful. My body unclenches, my limbs grow heavy. All the tension I carry seems to melt away, taking with it my resolve; I become almost lethargic with relief.

I take a shallow breath.

“Hey,” she says again, touching her cool fingers to my face, grazing my cheek. “Who do I have to kill?”

I pull away, smiling faintly at the ground when I say, “Did you tell Nouria you wanted to postpone our wedding?”

Ella’s horror is immediate.

She sits back and stares at me, fear and shock and anger coalescing into a single, indistinguishable mass of feeling. I avert my eyes as she processes my question, but her reaction does quite a bit to ameliorate my headspace. Just until she says—

“Yes.”

I go unnaturally still.

“But Nouria wasn’t supposed to tell you that.”

I look up at her then. Ella is trying to hide her panic from me. She looks away, looks into her hands. I don’t understand what’s happening, and I say this out loud.

Ella can’t stop shaking her head. She clasps her hands tight. “Nouria wasn’t supposed to tell you that. That wasn’t—she wasn’t—”

“But it’s true.”

Ella meets my eyes. “It’s technically true, yes, but she shouldn’t have— She shouldn’t have been the one to say that to you. Nouria and I discussed this a couple of days ago. I’d said that if we couldn’t—if we couldn’t pull things together in time, that maybe, maybe we could wait—”

“Oh.” I squint up into the sky, searching for the sun.

“I was going to tell you myself,” she says, more quietly now. “I was just waiting to know . . . more. About how today might turn out. There were some unexpected setbacks this morning, which cost us a lot of time, but I was still hoping we’d be able to figure everything out. Everyone has been working really hard—Kenji told me there was a chance we could still pull it all together today, but if Nouria—”

“I see.” I push a hand through my hair, drag it down my neck. “So you discussed this with everyone? Everyone but me.”

“Aaron. I’m so sorry. This sounds horrible. I hear it—I hear myself saying it, and I hear how horrible it sounds.”

I take a deep, shaky breath. I don’t know what to do with my arms, or my legs. They feel prickly suddenly; all pins and needles. I want to tear them off my body.

I’m staring at the ground when I say, “Have you changed your mind? About marrying me?”

“No,” she says, the word and the emotional force behind it so potent I’m compelled to look up. I see the anguish in her eyes, and I feel it, too; she seems racked with guilt and resignation, an unusual combination of feelings I can’t parse. But her love for me is palpable. She takes my hands and the feeling magnifies, flooding my body with a relief so acute I want to lie down.